The revelatory multimedia opera Violet Fire centers on the inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), a visionary inventor responsible for breakthroughs in electricity, radio, robotics, and computer circuitry. Tesla was prone to waking hallucinations: he literally envisioned his way toward the ownership of more than 700 patents and countless ideas, both practical and utterly fantastic—or so they seemed at the time. Many of his inventions functioned wirelessly and interactively, anticipating the WiFi world we now take for granted.
The evocative score, by Jon Gibson, a pioneering minimalist and senior member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, and dreamlike libretto, by writer Miriam Seidel, present Tesla as a prescient, transcendent figure, a man ahead of his time and in close touch with his imagination. A white pigeon he befriended in a Manhattan park takes on the role of his great love. She sings, telling him of nature’s mysteries. Together they encounter events and people from his life, including Mark Twain and the writer Margaret Storm, who asserted that Tesla was born on Venus.
Composer Jon Gibson's score for Violet Fire calls for six principal singers and chorus, and 12 musicians, in a one-act performance that runs about 90 minutes. In performance, the chorus has ranged from four (at the Temple University performance) to sixteen (in Belgrade and New York). Gibson's accessible and eclectic score features lyrical vocal lines floating over densely textured, groove-based sonic fields. His music integrates sampled and treated sounds from sources including lightning, cooing pigeons, and sound effects from early science-fiction serials.
The evocative score, by Jon Gibson, a pioneering minimalist and senior member of the Philip Glass Ensemble, and dreamlike libretto, by writer Miriam Seidel, present Tesla as a prescient, transcendent figure, a man ahead of his time and in close touch with his imagination. A white pigeon he befriended in a Manhattan park takes on the role of his great love. She sings, telling him of nature’s mysteries. Together they encounter events and people from his life, including Mark Twain and the writer Margaret Storm, who asserted that Tesla was born on Venus.
Composer Jon Gibson's score for Violet Fire calls for six principal singers and chorus, and 12 musicians, in a one-act performance that runs about 90 minutes. In performance, the chorus has ranged from four (at the Temple University performance) to sixteen (in Belgrade and New York). Gibson's accessible and eclectic score features lyrical vocal lines floating over densely textured, groove-based sonic fields. His music integrates sampled and treated sounds from sources including lightning, cooing pigeons, and sound effects from early science-fiction serials.